Hannah Overman Koch

Friday, March 11, 2011

Whale of a Tale

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I am very fortunate to share my creativity on Sunday mornings with children ranging from 1st to 4th grades. I have started teaching sunday school! And it's not your grandmother's sunday school class. There are 4 stations; cooking, games, storytelling and my personal favorite...ART! I, of course, (wo)man the art station every other month or so. Basically, you reiterate the lesson through various art projects. The kids are very receptive and participate very well.

So, for the first month I taught, they made origami whales, referring to Jonah, of course! All the grades did very well with this folding paper experience. My plan was to have the children donate a whale or two and I would create a larger project with what they provided. By the month's end I had quite a few to make something with!!! Now, what to make....

I decided to put them together in a wreath-like fashion. I actually used a sour cream lid as the base! First, I drilled 2 small holes on the lip of the lid to add to string too later for hanging purposes. Next, I applied blue art tissue paper to cover the lid. After the tissue paper had dried I started gluing whales at the positions of 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 9 o'clock . Then I continued filling in the gaps between those positions until I had used up all the large whales! Once those were in place I then glued the small whales on top of the larger whales. I think this really helped it look more uniform.

One child was familiar with origami and donated a crane she made! That became the center of this whale wreath. I also added moss to finish it off.

I had fun fur and other yarns for some to be able to hang their whales and a few of those were donated, hence the random yarn. I didn't want to take it out, it helps make the story!

We are currently getting ideas from the children who they would like to give it too. It's a special piece that each child can look at and see the corrulation of their efforts going to make someone else smile!